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Chicken Pates

A pastry-wrapped chicken mixture baked with eggs, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Pates

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the chopped chicken well.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over heat.

  3. Stir in the minced hard-boiled eggs and chopped parsley.

  4. Add the seasoned chicken and let it almost boil.

Fill and serve

  1. Remove the baked pastry from the patty pans while hot.

  2. Fill the pastry with the chicken mixture and place in the oven to heat.

  3. Arrange on a dish and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the pâtés their savoury flavour.
Rich drawn butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the filling a smooth, moist texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a creamy texture to the filling as they are stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the seasoned chicken and letting it almost boil. Heating the chicken gently until it is just hot helps it blend with the butter and eggs. If it boils hard, the proteins toughen and the filling can turn dry and rubbery.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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